PESHAWAR, April 21: Police on Wednesday claimed to have found a rocket in the outskirts of Peshawar on Wednesday. The rocket was first detected by locals in the Pishtakhara police station jurisdiction , half buried in an open field who immediately informed police.

The Crimes Investigation Department later took possession of the rocket and defused it. But sources told Dawn the 107 mm rocket had in fact been detected the day after the first rocket attack on Peshawar on March 23.

Four rockets had been fired into Peshawar on that day, one landing inside the Balahisar Fort which headquarters the Frontier Corps, another landed in the vicinity of the district courts, a third fell into the parking lot of the Civil Secretariat and a fourth one hit a wall in Dabgari Gardens.

A man and his son were wounded in the attack which police had then claimed to have originated from Shahkas in the adjacent tribal area. The claim was apparently made in an effort to shift the blame on the political authorities administering the tribal areas.

Investigators however, had maintained that the rockets that had a range of maximum eight kilometres had been fired from within the settled district. To the embarrassment of the police however, investigations led them to the site of the launch of the rocket attacks the very next day, when residents in Pishtakhara informed them about the rocket.